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President Obama will ask the Supreme Court to clear the way for his far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s immigration system, administration lawyers said Tuesday, setting up a battle in the nation’s highest court over whether nearly five million undocumented immigrants can legally live and work in the United States.

A federal appeals court said Monday that President Obama could not move forward with his plans to overhaul immigration rules by providing up to five million people with work permits and protection from deportation.

Tens of thousands of children like him are born on the run from war, persecution and poverty — some in cities swelling with exiles, like Yazan’s Beirut, others in forlorn refugee camps from Kenya to Thailand, and still others in transit, as their parents cross the Mediterranean for a new life in Europe. They belong to no nation

The rubber dinghy rolled perilously on the waves and twisted sideways, nearly flipping, as more than three dozen passengers wrapped in orange life vests screamed, wept and cried frantically to God and the volunteers waiting on the rocky beach.

With Slovenia behind them and Austria just ahead, the asylum seekers shoved at the metal barriers blocking their path and chanted a plea into the smoky night air: “We want to go!” Nearly 1,000 people had been waiting all day for the border crossing to open, penned into a no-man’s land by twitchy troops armed with pistols and assault rifles who met requests for food or water with stern commands and glares icy enough to match the fast-falling temperature.

The European Union predicted Thursday that up to 3 million additional asylum seekers could enter the 28-member bloc by the end of next year, suggesting the staggering pace of new arrivals in recent months shows no sign of abating.

In July, 29 members of Congress sent a letter to the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch urging them to halt the planned expansion of the controversial, privately run Adelanto Detention Facility in California. The letter also called for an independent investigation into allegations of systemic medical neglect and abuse there, which an ICE internal watchdog alleged to have contributed to the death of at least one detainee.

Drowned babies and toddlers washed onto Greece's famed Aegean Sea beaches, and a grim-faced diver pulled a drowned mother and child from a half-sunk boat that was decrepit long before it sailed. On shore, bereaved women wailed and stunned-looking fathers cradled their children. At least 27 people, more than half of them children, died in waters off Greece Friday trying to fulfill their dream of a better life in Europe.